Marine engines

Well, for people such as Swishy and his Screemer mates, there's some news they can take heart in.
If they ever get to Darwin (yeah, I know it's off the Melways map) .. they can go out to the Cullen Bay Marina, and look for a big old blue-and-white Catamaran, that does the daily Darwin Harbour, Sunset cruises (pic below).

Not only is the Sunset cruise a great way to finish the day .. those Screemer addicts will be able to discover that this old girl is powered by no less than 2 x 12V-92 screemers.
I had a chat to the Skipper and I seem to remember he told me they'd done over 18,000 hrs with only one major overhaul, that mostly involved a top end overhaul.
Unfortunately, the Screemer lovers will be disappointed if they were looking forward to hearing 2 x 12V-92's on full song .. because this cunning old Skipper/owner isn't about to wear those Screemers out, or keep Arabs in new gold-plated Lamborghinis .. he specialises in making sure those Screemers only sit on a maximum of about 1200-1300 RPM at all times!

Then there's my Roberts 34 steely.
Yanmar 2QM20, under the cockpit with access via removable side panels, Argo V-drive.

More White boats.
Italian build, engine room brothel.
Twin Cat 3412's.

Aus. built 30m workboat.
Twin K series Cummins, loafing along.
Crook photo, bumped my head.

Is the Queenscliff/Sorrento ferry still 100% Cummins powered? Or are they now slumming it?

I have had a couple of Gardner powered boats in Papua New Guinea. They are the only engine that is cannibal-proof.

From the time before WW2 they powered the coastal trading fleet and the same engines are still going today in quite a number of remaining boats. GM's, Cummins, Cats etc are in the modern boats but they last 5 minutes as village boat engines.

The Gardners withstand unimaginable abuse, no servicing, overheating from blocked cooling water which would kill a GM, salt water in the oil when the bilge-water got so high it went halfway up the engine etc etc.

A great number of Gardners are just straight salt-water cooled with no heat exchanger.

Many had no electrics with hand start only with the shaft running across the top of the engine and a chain down to the front of the crank. I had a 1917 pearling lugger with this system and it took two people to start the engine. One would stand bent over in the 5' high engine room cranking until he reached warp speed and his mate would drop a decompression lever on one cylinder (you could only get it through one compression on the crank-handle). As soon as it fired the rest of the decompression levers would be dropped. This engine was 5 cylinder 5LW.

The boat was 63 foot long and had no engine controls at the tiller so it was pretty exciting coming alongside in a wind or current. The "engine man" would stand with his head through the engine-room hatch halfway down the boat while the skipper at the tiller right at the back yelled instructions. These became more strident and shriller as the situation deteriorated while the engine man was like a jack in the box diving down to increase power, decrease power, forward, reverse always about 30 seconds after the situation required the resulting action.

Strong words often resulted between master and engineer as the boat slammed into the jetty.

The second boat I had was a 1939 60' coastal trading boat with a 4LW. This had the luxury of electric start and throttle and gear controls at the helm!

Those Gardners valve-bouncing at 1200rpm just seemed to make fuel. Half a pint a pot an hour.

EMD 16-710G3B for the two stroke guys.
Around 4000hp per side.

It always gets me how any fitter manages to work in some of those cramped engine rooms. The alternative of engine removal is often not much alternative at all!

I can recall one of Wigmores Tractors blokes telling how they had to overhaul a D343 in a boat. The engine had to come out, it was a full rebuild due to crankshaft damage.
It took them 8 solid hours to get the engine out of the engine room and up on deck, where they could dismantle it!

You gotta admit, that last pic sort of makes the job worthwhile. You wouldn't normally associate pics like that, with work!

Both the big MTU's in post 26 came out through the side of the hull in Cairns.
Cut a big 3mx3m hole, dismantle the engines into suitable lifts, out through the hole, down to Sydney for re-build.
After re-build, the surveyor wanted to see dyno results so the engines had to be built, tested, then dismantled again, and finally freighted to Cairns for installation.
Weld up the hull, you'd never know what had happened, first class workmanship.
An all alloy hull/superstructure boat too.
This sort of work is nothing compared to some steel hull repairs due to rust/poor maintenance.

Jeffo,

On what type of vessel were the MTU 16V 538 TE82 fitted? Presumably something high performance, these (really a WWII Maybach design) usually ended in military craft. Worked on them during my service with the Israeli Navy eons ago, we had 4 of them in the Saar missile strike crafts, 3660 hp at 2050 RPM and it did not half thunder at anything over 1600 RPM

Very reliable if maintained religiously but complicated, very complicated (roller bearing c/shaft, 6 valves per head, dry sump lubrication with 4 oil pumps) if anything went wrong...



That's the old boat, INS Alyah, now ARM Hurac